Voices: When Is My Love?

I remember countless collegiate nights spent alone pushing the boundaries of wakefulness until dawn. Sometime I wrote and I usually listened to music, but I always daydreamed.

I imagined scenario after ridiculously romantic scenario. The phone would ring or a knock would sound on my dorm room door and there would be someone who understood and would free me from my loneliness. I could have actively sought companionship. I did on other occasions. I had no shortage of friends. But the charm of what I longed for lay in the very fact that it did not exist. I refused to settle for the real. I embraced fatigue and bathed night after night in the romantic melancholia of an Anais Nin-inspired dream life.

I never thought this degree of neurotic deprivation could be common, even among the most idealistic of young men and women. But the way I see it now, my past indulgences were merely a symptom of a most classic malady. It is common in America to constantly strive for more and more. Only the lazy and un-ambitious are content to be happy with less than the greatest possible yield. What kind of capitalist stops at good enough?

It's a philosophy that may have made our economy strong, but it's no model for human relationships. And as you may have already suspected, mental obsession is not just an American phenomenon. European-educated author Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now, Practicing the Power of Now, and Stillness Speaks) recently described this familiar mindset in an interview with Steven Donoso in "The Sun."

"In ordinary life there is a continuous moving away from the moment to an imagined future that is unconsciously regarded as more important. Our striving toward the future, our inner compulsion to deny the present moment, manifests itself as a continuous sense of unease and latent dissatisfaction with what is."

Freud, too, acknowledged our "normal state of consciousness" as one of "countinuous unease." Dissatisfaction is apparently the norm. I've already seen such restless hunger haunting my daughters. Like most children, they are always wanting more.

As symbols of romance once again flood our cultural landscape this St. Valentine's season, many of us will struggle against disappointment. Even the happiest newlyweds, the freshest loves, and even those absolutely certain they've found their soul mate, are destined to stress over the ultimately perfect romantic encounter. Who doesn't want to blush at that evening of sheer magic as they reminisce on their deathbed?

Do I look sexy enough in my new dress? Will dinner taste right? Will we be on time? No, I can't get my period TONIGHT! How does an emotional perfectionist create romance in spite of the expectation anxiety? If Tolle is to be trusted, it's a matter of forgetting the past and refusing to think about the future.

The magic is made when we stare deep into each other's eyes here and now in the present and allow ourselves to forget where we are, where we've been and where life might bring us tomorrow. The only way to put our minds at rest, Tolle implies, is to force ourselves to experience the bliss of being in the moment.

This week, I received a magnetic postcard urging me to "save the date" for my tenth college reunion this June. The epiphany that startled me as I considered rewinding the clock was instant. I wouldn't have necessarily have thought of myself as satisfied - in high school a friend brought me a joke key chain that read, "All I want is a little more than I'll ever get" - but if I had the chance to go back and begin again, fresh out of college, I'd turn it down. I didn't even have to think about it.

Sure, there are things I might do differently. There are things I wanted out of life that I still don't have. But going back would mean giving up what I have right now. And I like when I am.

--alicia grega-pikul, 12 February 2004